Nutrition

Nutrition is the most underrated part of an amateur's training, and the mistake here usually goes one way: people eat less than they need, not more. So this whole area is built around a single question — are you eating enough for the work you are doing. An honest caveat up front: the nutrition methodology is ready, but there is no separate nutrition section in the app yet. One thing from it is already working — the “take with you” line on the session card: what food and drink to take for that duration, in words, with no grams in the heading. Everything else below describes the approach, not a working feature.

The frame: what this is and what it is not#

These are general nutrition guidelines for training load, for healthy adult amateurs. Not individual clinical dietetics and not weight loss.

The platform does not diagnose, does not prescribe treatment, does not assess your health and does not replace a doctor. It can remind you to eat before a long session and suggest you see a specialist — and there its authority ends.

There will be no weight-loss features in TriCoo, no target weight, no “burn it off” or “earn it” mechanics, and no rewards for eating less. That is a decision, not a feature we forgot.

Carbohydrate for the day's load#

Carbohydrate is fuel, and the amount follows the load of the day rather than the calendar:

• an easy day, technique or recovery — 3–5 g per kilogram of body mass;
• a moderate day, around an hour of steady work — 5–7 g/kg;
• a hard day, one to three hours — 6–10 g/kg;
• a very hard day, longer than 4–5 hours or a big brick session — 8–12 g/kg.

Protein — 1.2–2.0 g/kg a day, spread out: about 0.3 g/kg per meal, that is 20–40 g every 3–5 hours. Fat is the rest of your energy, roughly 20–35%, and it is not worth dropping below about 20%: your total energy sags along with it.

The platform intends to show all this as food rather than grams: “porridge with a banana” is clearer than “80 g of carbohydrate”. Calories will never be the headline.

These numbers are a floor to reach on training days, not a ceiling to fear. Carbohydrate here is fuel and permission, not something you have to “work off”.

Fuelling around a session#

Before. A carbohydrate meal 1–4 hours ahead, 1–4 g/kg — the closer to the start, the less. Before hard work, keep it familiar and light, with less fibre and fat: your stomach stays calmer that way.

During. Under 45–75 minutes you usually need nothing. From one hour to 2.5 hours — 30–60 g of carbohydrate an hour. Longer than 2.5–3 hours — up to about 90 g an hour, but always as a mix. The reason is the absorption ceiling: a single source tops out at about 60 g an hour, while a glucose and fructose mix at roughly 2:1 travels by different routes, raises the ceiling and sits more easily in the stomach.

After. If your next hard session is less than 8 hours away — 1.0–1.2 g/kg of carbohydrate an hour for the first few hours, plus about 0.3 g/kg of protein an hour. When the next hard session is a day away, your total daily intake matters more than a strict half-hour window: there is no need to run for a shake at minute thirty.

Tolerance is personal, so race nutrition is rehearsed in training rather than tried for the first time on race day.

Drinking and salt#

The guideline is single and simple: drink to thirst — before, during and after. Fixed volumes on a schedule do not fit and can be dangerous: sweat rates differ several times over between people.

Exercise-associated hyponatraemia — blood sodium falling below 135 mmol/l — is caused mainly by drinking beyond your losses, not by a lack of salt. That is exactly why “drink more” is bad advice. What should put you on alert during long work is bloating, sloshing in the stomach, headache, nausea, weight gain; that picture on its own confirms nothing — the condition is established by a blood test, not by how you feel and not by an app.

Sodium matters in long work, beyond 2–3 hours, and in the heat — as a replacement for losses, not as a reason to drink more.

The platform will never tell you to “drink X ml every Y minutes”: advice like that is more dangerous than no advice. Confusion, a severe headache or vomiting during or after long work is a reason to call emergency services.

Guarding against under-eating#

The main safety topic here is relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). When food systematically falls short of your training and your body's basic functions, bones, hormones, immunity and mental health suffer, and performance drops.

The platform neither calculates nor shows energy availability: an honest calculation needs reliable intake, the expenditure of the session and body composition, and the app has no such data. Smart scales give only a weight trend. Clinical assessment is done by a specialist, not by an algorithm.

Instead of a number there is a short optional screening: eight questions answered “yes / no / I don't know”, repeated every 90 days or whenever you like. Any question can be skipped, a skip counts as “no”, and you will never see a score — all that comes out is the text and the decision about your plan.

How your answers affect the plan:

• one sign — the plan does not change; the platform reminds you to eat enough and asks again in 30 days;
• two or more, or a stress fracture in the past 12 months — cautious mode: load grows at the lower bound, impact volume does not increase, and you are offered to discuss your nutrition with a specialist;
• four or more, no periods or two stress fractures in a year — no progression is built. You can train at your usual volume, but we will not increase it until you have had a consultation.

The screening never triggers an emergency stop: its questions are about a long-running shortage of food, not about an acute condition. How serious it is is not for a questionnaire to decide — that is a conversation with a doctor or a sports dietitian.

What the platform does not do#

It does not count your calories and does not prescribe a deficit. It neither creates nor suggests training with low stores: carrying such protocols over into results is unreliable, and the message twists too easily into “eat less”. And it does not deal with the clinical side — allergies, gastrointestinal disease, diabetes, eating disorders, pregnancy and medication are handled by a doctor or a sports dietitian.

Every future nutrition feature faces the same test: if it can be twisted into a deficit diary, it has to be redone. How this connects with stopping training is covered in “Safety and where medicine begins”.